It Takes A Village
by Lucillia
Summary: ...To Make a Baby. Or, Why Snape Shouldn't Leave Certain Potions Unattended in Public Places.


Ron and Hermione had watched their friend Harry's face rapidly shift from shock to disgust to bewilderment and back again as he perused an official looking document that was nearly as long as one of Hermione's Potion's essays from Hogwarts which had been recovered from a specially enchanted fire safe that had been salvaged from the wreckage of Godric's Hollow shortly after Voldemort's demise. It was nearly a year after the war ended, and things were finally settled enough that Harry finally had enough time to look through the important documents his parents had left behind.

"If Snape weren't dead, I'd murder him!" Harry snarled as he slammed the document he'd just finished reading down on the table in front of him.

"What's that Harry?" Ron asked.

"MY BIRTH CERTIFICATE!" Harry howled.

&!&

Nearly two decades earlier:

Severus Snape nearly dropped in exhaustion as he placed one last ingredient in the potion and set it under stasis. He had worked on it non-stop for the last thirty-six hours, all for his beloved Lily who had come to him begging for him to give her the one thing that arrogant asshole could not. While the child would be Potter's spawn, there would be the small consolation that a tiny bit of himself had gone into it's creation. There would be a small bit of himself in the child he could not deny his beloved, hidden beneath James Potter's hateful features.

Now that he was at a stopping point, he would get himself something to eat and a well earned rest. He would call that odious jerk Potter to add his blood and complete the potion in the morning.

He would have to give Madam Rosmerta a generous tip for allowing him to tie up the public potion's lab for so long, despite the fact that it is seldom used and generally gathered dust for most of the year outside the Annual Potioneers and Alchemists' Convention.

&!&

"I think it's done." Sirius Black said as he examined the cauldron that Snape had left unattended moments earlier after securing the door to the lab with a locking charm that had not been able to withstand the White Sheep of the Black family's skills at breaking-and-entering. "Remus, come and check if it's done"

"Sirius, I really don't think we should be doing this." Remus hissed as he nervously looked toward the bar and its usual rowdy weekend crowd.

"Look. The Marauders share everything...well, just about everything...I mean, it would be kinda creepy if we shared girlfriends and underwear...and the first Marauder baby should be no potion thing is like fate or something. If we put our blood in, he or she will belong to all of us." Sirius said in a rather soothing tone.

"James'll be really mad." Remus said, clearly wavering. This was probably his only chance at ever having a child.

"He'll get over it." Sirius said.

"I still don't know. What if my blood..." Remus started.

"It won't. The Werewolf thing's from spit, I mean you have to get bit to get infected. Besides, my, Peter's, James' and Lily's blood will be there to overpower it and cancel it out if there is any chance of that happening." Sirius said, cutting him off.

"I hope James forgives us." Remus said as he pricked his finger and passed the small knife over to Sirius.

"He will. In fact, he'll think it's brilliant and wonder why he didn't think of it first." Sirius replied as he pricked his finger and passed the knife to Peter.

"I hope you're right." Remus said as he, Peter and Sirius tipped their bleeding fingers over the cauldron at the same time.

As they left the lab upon completing the deed, they barely noticed the man with a split lip leading a teenager who had obviously snuck out of Hogwarts for a night on the town and was now paying for it in the form of a bloody nose down the hallway.

&!&

" 'S fine." slurred a rather inebriated Damocles Belby as he leaned a young Barty Crouch Jr whose nose was bleeding profusely over the cauldron before he went off in search of something. "Th' las' ngredient 's blood anyway, so we're helpin' the guy out. I'll be damned if I can remember wha' it 's righ' now, but I know yer blood won' hurt it. We'll get yeh fixed up 's soon 's I can fin' that bloody first aid kit."

As he passed the cauldron a third time in his drunken hunt, he idly flicked some blood from his split lip into the cauldron.

How he managed to put a Stasis Charm on the cauldron in his state could only be attributed to the luck that seems to be possessed by fools, drunks, and boys named Harry Potter.

&!&

Lucius Malfoy sighed and continued towards his destination after watching a pair of unconscious drunks who had obviously been engaged in a brawl quite recently get thrown out of the bar. He had been informed by his brother-in-law Rodolphus that Snape had set up shop here after that rather unfortunate explosion in his lab that would take at least another week to fix.

Once he reached Snape's temporary setup, he discovered that the young Potion's Master was nowhere to be found. The potion he requested from Snape was sitting under a stasis charm. However, it was lacking the final ingredient before it was meticulously stirred in a precise pattern that he couldn't quite remember at the moment and left to simmer for another twelve hours, blood.

Pricking his finger and hoping that the Felix Felicis that was running through his system wouldn't adversely affect the outcome, he added his blood to the potion and set it back under stasis for Snape to deal with as soon as he returned. On his way out, he left Snape a note.

He would be keeping this potion in reserve in case it was needed rather than using it immediately as he had thought he would be doing when he had first requested the potion, as it had been confirmed that afternoon that Narcissa was expecting a child that was almost certainly male.

&!&

Gideon and Fabian Prewett had taken their brother-in-law Arthur to the Three Broomsticks as it was clear that the poor man needed a night out with the boys, away from Molly and the kids. They had been trying to see how many drinks it would take before Arthur passed out and they could pull out the lipstick and face paint when they saw Malfoy head towards the back, towards either the restrooms or the seldom used public potion's lab that had been home to many pranks in the making during their school career before they had graduated and handed their mantle down to the Marauders.

They decided to investigate,and dragged Arthur along with them.

Upon seeing the potion that was in the lab that Lucius had briefly stopped in before heading on his way and what was written on the note next to it, Gideon and Fabian turned to each-other and smirked evilly.

They couldn't wait to see the look on Malfoy's face when his little heir came out with either Prewett Strawberry or Weasley Red hair.

After adding their and Arthur's blood to the mix, Fabian picked up the stirring rod. He had been about to start stirring when there was a commotion outside and a crystal phial flew through the door and shattered against the ceiling sending what may or may not have been blood spraying across the room.

They quickly scattered, Fabian dropping the stirrer where he found it and Gideon hastily throwing up a Stasis Charm on their way out.

None of them noticed that the small note had fallen off the table and briefly stuck to the dirt on the bottom of Arthur's shoe and been rendered virtually illegible by the time it fell off near the door.

&!&

Mundungus Fletcher stared in shock at the red smear and amethyst shards that had been his biggest score to date.

That tiny jar had been reputed to have contained the carefully preserved blood of King Arthur himself, and it had been shattered by some careless lout that had wanted to have some words with him about some slightly less than legal and rather less than fresh potions ingredients.

Not knowing what else to do, he leaned against the nearest wall and cried.

&!&

Lord Voldemort sneered as he passed the usual 3am Friday Night brawl which was technically a Saturday Morning brawl. Had he known he would be forced to go out of his way and traverse amongst the rabble to speak with his young Potion's Prodigy when he had cast that Crucio at him during a critical stage of production, he might have refrained, or at least waited the thirty seconds it would have taken to render the potion less volatile.

The fact that he was close to Hogwarts and didn't want to attract unwanted attention that might disrupt certain plans he'd had in motion at the moment was all that stayed his hand as three red-heads blew past him.

Upon entering young Snape's temporary headquarters, he'd noticed signs that the 3am brawl had been through here. Young Snape was not to be found, and would pay dearly for his absence very soon.

He had been contemplating searching amongst the rabble in the bar for a minor follower so he could summon the boy when he spotted the mud covered note and decided it was not worth wasting his time over.

The note appeared to be instructions for what needed to be done if he arrived before Snape returned. The first step appeared to be "Add three drops of blood". Everything else was illegible.

He pricked his finger and added the required amount of blood before swiftly placing the potion back under its stasis field.

"That Potion better be ready in time for the Ritual, or there'll be hell to pay." Voldemort muttered as he left the potion's laboratory and went out the back door because he didn't want to wade through the combatants or risk getting hit by flying drinks.

&!&

Alberforth Dumbledore, who had been under a disillusionment charm for the last twelve hours so he could inform his bastard brother of exactly what the Snape boy was up to really had to go to the bathroom, and it appeared that the coast was clear. Dropping the charm, he moved from the corner he'd damn near fallen asleep in and headed towards the door.

"Eh, what the hell," he said as he passed the cauldron that had been a great source of entertainment for the last hour, which had more than made up for having to spend eleven hours listening to Snape bitch and whine about his "Beloved Lily" and the pain he would be in tomorrow thanks to this Stake-out.

He paused briefly to remove the stasis charm, add his own two cents...er drops of blood, and replace the stasis charm before he headed out the door.

That Potter brat was going to get one hell of a surprise nine months from now.

&!&

Present...er, sometime in 1999 rather:

"What's so awful about your Birth Certificate Harry?" Hermione asked as Ron picked the offending document up to examine it himself.

"You'd better read this first." Harry said as he handed a note that had been written by his mother to his friend.

"Bloody Hell!" Ron yelled. "According to this, you're Harry James Snape Lupin Black Pettigrew Crouch Belby Malfoy Prewett Weasley Prewett Pendragon Riddle Dumbledore Lestrange Nott Smith Black Flint Goyle..."


End file.
